


when it ends

by siren_songs



Series: of Love and Seamonsters [2]
Category: The Witcher (TV), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Domestic Fluff, Emotional Constipation, Fluff, Geralt isn't particularly monogamous and jaskier is ok with it, Getting Together, Getting to Know Each Other, Hurt/Comfort, Kelpies, M/M, Polyamory, Resolved Romantic Tension, Sort Of, Werewolves, geralt finally gets his head out his ass guys!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-21
Updated: 2020-01-27
Packaged: 2021-02-27 08:28:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 18,496
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22354108
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/siren_songs/pseuds/siren_songs
Summary: Geralt finally follows Jaskier to the coast, not knowing what he will find there.
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia & Jaskier | Dandelion, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia & Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg (mentioned)
Series: of Love and Seamonsters [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1607506
Comments: 199
Kudos: 1127
Collections: Geralt is Sorry, The Witcher Alternate Universes





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> as promised! please enjoy

Geralt does his level best to forget Jaskier. The bard. The bard whose heart he is sure he has irrevocably broken and likely never wants to see him again; one of only two people he has ever truly… appreciated, very much, and who wormed his way into Geralt’s life in so many ways that he is still picking out the shrapnel, even now.

It is only small things, largely insignificant things, that have a terrible habit of twisting his heart strings every time he notices them.

Jaskier’s scent lingers on his clothes, on his saddle, on Roach, for weeks after he leaves, and whenever he finds himself downwind of it, it is another shred to his already scarred-over heart. It is woodsmoke and leather, and bright summer flowers, and Geralt occasionally finds himself stopping and standing and just _breathing_.

And then he opens his eyes to Roach’s judgemental face and he scowls, and that brief moment of peace is washed away.

He finds crushed flowers in the bottom of his saddlebags, from when Jaskier picked them and insisted he would keep them. There is a chain of daisies that briefly adorned Roach’s poll before Geralt snatched them down, then—in a rare moment of weakness, when Geralt dared to imagine what it would be like to—to _love_ somebody—placed them atop Jaskier’s head, and the bright smile he earned for it had kept him warm for hours.

He realises his shirts have been mended with brightly coloured thread, and finds he cannot rip the stitches and redo them, because it will be like Jaskier was never in his life at all—never sat by a fire rather like this one, with Geralt’s clothes in his lap, threading a needle with red and yellow and sky-blue, the same as his eyes, and patched his clothes for him.

He finds himself further north than he originally intended to travel, and when he pulls out Roach’s second blanket he finds that little dandelions have been crudely embroidered in each of the corners. Geralt had always assumed that the bard had been simply—composing songs, or writing poetry, or some other such exercise, when he had been out on his hunts, but… apparently not.

Geralt steadfastly does not think about Jaskier, sitting alone, stitching dandelions into Roach’s blanket in the light of the fire, waiting for Geralt to return. Wondering if he would return.

He tries to put the bard out of his mind.

~~~

It has been two months, since the upheaval of his life, and killing monsters is no longer such a distraction.

Geralt finds himself anticipating Jaskier’s drawn expression upon seeing the witcher covered with blood after his latest hunt; when he is stitching himself up and straining to reach without tearing himself open wider, he finds himself pausing, waiting for another pair of hands to take over.

Jaskier slipped into his life in so many ways and Geralt did not notice until he was apparently gone for good.

The leaves litter the ground where he is, providing a thick mulch underfoot where they have rotted, and Roach lays her ears back at the noise as she is forced to wade her way through mountains of the things. The trees here are older than Geralt can say; they have been here long before witchers existed, and will survive until long after, he hopes. Their branches cradle the sky and he wonders what this place looked like when they were young.

He wonders what this place would look like, were Jaskier tramping through the leaves beside him. If Geralt might relent and pull him onto Roach’s back, behind him, his back to Jaskier’s chest, flush against one another.

The last time they’d done that had resulted in Jaskier sinking into Geralt’s warmth and falling asleep, kept there only by Geralt’s tight grip on the arm that had snaked around his waist.

That had been a good day, he reflects to himself, a small, treacherous smile sneaking across his lips while he isn’t paying attention.

Then he shakes all thoughts of the bard from his mind, and urges Roach on into a trot to jog the remaining vestiges that cling to his senses; Jaskier’s scent, his laugh, the blue of his eyes.

Perhaps he isn’t getting over the bard quite so well as he thought.

~~~

The rain is coming down with a vengeance when Yennefer slides into the seat beside him, wineskin in hand and an oddly neutral expression adorning her face.

“Yennefer,” he begins cautiously, setting down his ale. It wouldn’t do to destroy this inn between the two of them; he no longer has his—the bard to try and salvage his reputation.

“Geralt,” she answers, looking carefully at his face. He isn’t sure how to behave under the scrutinization, so he just looks back at her, calculating the unchanging shape of her lips, the slope of her nose, the colour of her eyes. Wondering what she is here for.

“Your bard,” she begins, and he feels every muscle he has seize at the words.

“Gods, Geralt, what is the matter with you? I was only going to say he was asking after you,” she laughs at his expression, and reaches across him for a hunk of the bread he has been methodically tearing apart since she sat next to him.

“He was?” he frowns. That’s… unexpected.

“Well, he asked how you and I were doing. Seems he doesn’t know that you and I are no longer involved,” she tells him. Yennefer has always had such a black and white way of looking at the world. They were together, and now they aren’t.

“I haven’t seen him since the mountain. Since the dragons,” he carefully does not look at her as he says it, and she is silent for a moment, before a hand grabs his forearm and he looks up at her, alarmed.

“Why the _fuck_ not?” she demands, purple eyes blazing, and he is reminded of her in Rinde, howling, demanding all that she believes she is owed. She is a force of nature, and it is not often he forgets it, but the reminder is always incredible.

He has gotten lost in her. She grips his arm harder. “ _Why not_ , Geralt? That man loves you with everything he is. Why the fuck would you let that go?”

The words cut him deep. They are words he has not allowed himself to think, has never allowed himself to believe, in his heart of hearts. He _cannot_ know these words, because it means that all these years he has known Jaskier, slept with him, kept him by his side, the bard was suffering, and said nothing.

Thinking that is like looking at the harshest summer sun: he flinches away from it instinctively, eyes stinging.

“I—I didn’t—” he tries, but both he and Yennefer both know that his sentence is going nowhere, so she saves them both the misery and cuts him off before he can go too far with it.

“ _Find_ him, Geralt. Otherwise what would be the point?”

He thinks to ask her—point of _what?_ But then he thinks it might be rather a philosophical question, and by the time he muses that one over—point of _love_ , point of companionship, point of killing monsters, point of fighting for pretty much _anything_ —Yennefer is gone with a scrap of paper left behind, and there are several more bottles of ales than he remembered buying, and he is rather more drunk than he thought he was.

He takes the paper, but the words bleed together on the page and he is forced to stumble to bed, drunk off his ass, before he reads it.

~~~

The page is still there in the morning. He’d half expected it to be gone, burnt to ash in the night, or to have only been a figment of his imagination in the first place, and his trepidation only grows as he reads the short note.

Fucking sorceresses. They’re all the same. Yennefer likes to think she’s thrown off Aretuza’s shackles, but she’s just like the rest of them—cryptic as all fuck and twice as useless when you really need them.

_What pleases you, Geralt?_

A hot bath and a full coin purse, he thinks snidely to himself, imagining growling it at her with no small amount of grim glee, before he throws the note down.

Then, after some careful consideration, he folds it and slides it amongst his other belongings, and promptly forgets about it.

~~~

He is securing a new Roach when he next remembers the note.

His old mare, whom he had been riding for nearly ten years now, has been growing thinner and thinner over the last few months, and finally it is costing more to feed her than she is worth.

She’s old, now—sixteen years, which is a good age for a warhorse. She wasn’t bred to be one, nor was she really muscular enough for the lifestyle, though she did okay. She was brave, and she was loyal, and she was a good listener, and that’s all he can really ask for his horses.

He tries not to grow attached to his horses. They die too easily. But he can admit a fondness for this one, whom he picked up from a farmer’s market after the colt he’d stolen had finally exacted his revenge against Geralt for tearing him from the comfortable life he’d likely have had in a manor’s riding stables and had flung him into a river with an exaggerated flick of his heels.

From the water, Geralt had watched the black bastard turn and run into the forest and hoped he’d get eaten by wolves, or something.

So he had crawled out of the river once he’d found a low enough bank to pull himself onto, and walked until he’d found a village. There was a small market, and it was only two days before it opened and he was able to barter his services in finding out exactly _what_ was killing the livestock and removing it without compunction in return for a six-year-old draft-thoroughbred cross, with good bone and a fine head and none of the medical problems thoroughbreds are so renowned for.

He feels almost upset as he watches her be led away by the farmhand, her red coat glinting in the midday sun. He accepts the reins of his new steed, a four-year old mistake bred from one of their old plough horses and a destrier that had apparently escaped some lord’s herd, and had thrown every rider who’d tried to mount her.

She is taller than his other Roach, and slightly broader; he thinks she will grow another two inches and just top seventeen hands. Her coat is more rusty than other-Roach—it is a darker red, the colour of dried blood, and her mane and tail are a darker brown still.

She looks at him with an evil glint in her eye and he thinks they will get along just fine.

~~~

He contemplates the note while the farmhand brings him her tack to inspect. He has tied her to the fence post and she has decided he is not much to look at; she dozes with her eyes closed, her mouth hanging open, and her right hind resting lazily. He wonders idly how quick she would move, if a monster were to come upon them now.

 _What pleases me?_ Is it supposed to be a trick question. This new horse pleases him, he thinks. The sun on his face pleases him. The smell of the forest on the wind pleases him. He doesn’t need a lot of things to be pleased; Yennefer knew this.

Is she speaking about Jaskier? Jaskier isn’t _his_ to be pleased about. He drove Jaskier away, quite effectively, and he doesn’t quite think he _deserves_ to have Jaskier back, in any case. Jaskier ought to stay away.

He is no closer to puzzling out the meaning when the stablehand returns with her saddle, her bridle slung over one shoulder.

“You’ll have to do it, sir—witcher, I mean. White wolf.” Geralt doesn’t spare the farmhand another glance before he’s hefting her saddle onto the blanket he laid on her back and is cinching the straps before she even notices the weight.

She snakes her head around to bite him, and, when she can’t quite reach him, cocks up one of her legs and kicks him harder than he was prepared for in the leg.

He grabs her nose in one hand, squeezing so she can’t breathe, and hisses a stream of expletives and curses and promises in Elder into her ears, and she lays them flat against her head but doesn’t complain once when he finishes tacking her up.

The farmhand gives him rather a frightened look when he mounts up, saddlebags strapped into place and swords slung across his back, and he wonders what stories this lad will tell of the Butcher of Blaviken who tamed their demon horse and rode off with it into the night.

 _Jaskier would appreciate the tale_ , he thinks fondly to himself, then draws himself up short with a fearsome scowl. New-Roach snorts in protest beneath him.

He needs to _stop_ thinking of the bard. Nothing is to come of it! He’s long gone, and Geralt should not be pining after him anyway, not when he was the one who _pushed_ him away.

The words don’t quite take, however, and his mood is quite ruined when he continues on.

~~~

It takes a further three weeks for him to admit defeat.

It is… very dramatic, when it happens.

He is in a tavern—one of the nicer ones, where minstrels both famous and rising come to sing their wares, and the food is usually identifiable and the ale doesn’t taste of piss.

He’s sitting in a darkened corner, swords resting against the wall where a shaft of light falls unbroken, and alights upon the silver and steel and serves to keep away strangers.

He’s had rather enough of strangers approaching him in taverns. It never seems to end well.

He tries his very hardest to ignore the steadily drinking patrons that have begun to fill the tavern, though when they are forced to squeeze close it is more difficult to keep his temper. The heat of the room, the strength of the ale, the sweat and dirt and oil on his skin and the tempestuous thoughts in his head all serve to slice his fuse shorter and shorter, until he thinks he is like to explode.

He finishes his drink, sets it down, and tries to stand and wriggle his way out of the mass of people.

The music pricks his ears before he realises what he is hearing; it is Jaskier’s witcher song—the first one. But it isn’t Jaskier singing it.

He has heard the song from other mouths before, of course, and it has never bothered him before. Music is music, and he’s never much cared for it.

Except the performance isn’t just the bard _singing_. He’s dressed as a mockery of a minstrel, with oversized, garish silks stuffed to turn the actor into a horrifying effigy of a bard. He sings and dances, and behind him a tall, brawny man with a white wig hulks and grunts and makes obscene motions with his hands.

Geralt is drawn up short.

He is used to such contempt; witchers have never been particularly popular, and while Jaskier may have turned a great many opinions to one of greater estimation of his guild, there are a great many others who still loathe witchers and all they stand for.

He’s never seen Jaskier treated so, however.

He understood, of course, that Jaskier had changed his public image for the better. That his music and his charm was great enough to overcome the stigma that witchers had contended with for decades now, and that they both had benefited from his music.

He’d never considered that Geralt himself would be bad for _Jaskier_. That the people’s hatred for the witcher was stronger than their love for music and a thrilling performance. That Jaskier would be… tainted, somehow, from his association with Geralt.

He stands there as epiphany strikes, and manages, quite by accident, to meet the eyes of the man masquerading as him as hit slips off a leather pouch and holds it out jeeringly to the crowd as the bard sings, _toss a coin to your witcher!_

Their eyes meet, and there is a spark of understanding, a moment of realisation, and then the man’s face twists to one of—fear. Good.

Geralt turns and leaves the inn before the situation can worsen.

Once outside, the fresh air hits him like a kikimora to the chest, and he stops, breathing deeply and slowly and trying to shake the thoughts that are crawling over his mind like flies at a corpse.

 _He was worse off from the moment he met you_ , a voice whispers insidiously, and he snarls aloud. The sound is feral and monstrous in the quiet of the night.

 _Jaskier knew what he was doing_ , he growls silently to himself, stalking around the inn to where the stables lay uneasily against the stone brick. They are built of light wood with plates of metal bolted atop them to keep off the rain, and the doors are just chains hooked across the front. Many of the finer horses stamp and snort uneasily as he passes them, uneasy with their accommodation.

He finds Roach flat on her side, uncaring of the strange horses around her or the whistle of wind from the woods beyond or the ramshackle stall she has been stabled in.

He slips inside, silent as the grave, and the black filly in the neighbouring stable eyes him and shifts away. He bares his teeth at her and she tosses her head and snorts.

He stamps down on the straw—dry and sparse, but Roach is used to sleeping on hard-packed ground and Geralt has slept on stone many a time—before laying down, glaring at Roach’s flank and silently swearing that if she rolls onto or kicks him in the night he’ll have her slaughtered for dog food.

“Jaskier knew what he was doing,” he whispers aloud, and a horse nickers, agreeing with him.

“He _knew what he was doing_ ,” he whispers more fiercely to himself, scrunching his brows and trying as hard as he might to convince himself.

 _You hurt him. Over and over. And he stayed anyway. Why would this time be any different?_ That quiet voice breathes to him, and he is alarmed to find that it sounds suspiciously like Yennefer.

“I can’t go after him,” he says. Far off he hears the hooting of an owl, the scurrying of mice through the undergrowth. Somewhere, a cat is stalking on feather-light feet, her tail twitching.

“I can’t go after him,” he pleads.

The wind condemns him. Roach’s snoring condemns him. The scrabble of mice in the rafters above him condemns him. Every sigh, every snort of the horses in the stables around him condemns him.

Maybe… just to see. Just to ascertain that the bard is healthy and hale and not wanting for money or work.

He doesn’t even have to _talk_ to Jaskier. Just look at him from afar, see with his own eyes that the bard is alright, and then he can be on his way, to Kaer Morhen or out hunting monsters and running from his destiny.

He knows, even as he rails against it, that his mind is made up, and he falls into an easy sleep knowing that tomorrow he will start hunting for his bard.

~~~

It takes three weeks to pinpoint Jaskier’s location, and he finds he is not surprised to learn he is at the coast.

He rides hard, the wind snatching at his hair, and the roaring in his ears is almost enough to silence the whirling thoughts in his mind.

~~~

Geralt has never particularly liked one terrain over the other, so long as it was mostly dry and the wind was quiet and Roach does not struggle so much with the ground.

The sea is beautiful to look at, though.

He is given fresh fish in the inn, and the chips are hot and salty and it is altogether a much more pleasant experience than he has had in quite some time.

He hears tell of a herd of kelpies that crawl out of the sea and ravage townsfolk in a nearby village, and sets off to see if there are any truth to the tales. His coin purse is uncomfortably empty.

He reaches the shore, the crashing waves a strange music to his hears, one he hasn’t heard in years, and the land is flat and bleak and the sea has washed away the hoofprints on the sand but there are plenty and more in the soft mud of the fields beyond the beach.

He and Roach spend the afternoon inspecting the tracks. If she is bothered by the demon-horse scent, she doesn’t show it; she’s steadier than her predecessor and he’s mildly surprised to find her pawing at the surf when he stops to take a break and splash the water over his neck, even knowing what she knows.

Perhaps she is part kelpie herself, he muses.

That is when he hears it. The sun is setting, gilding the ocean with golden strokes, the light glinting on the water well enough to temporarily blind him as he looks to the source of the noise. Roach even deigns to lift her head in the direction of the commotion.

First he sees a white horse, unsaddled and unbridled, lathered with sweat and carrying a single rider.

Geralt’s first instinct is that somebody has thrown themselves aboard a kelpie and are now being carted toward the sea; however, another two horses soon emerge from the rise, one a rippling red and white and the other a curious grey-blue, and it is obvious from the distant yells and whoops that the white horse is being pursued.

He watches them indifferently.

Then something curious happens; the rider on the red-and-white plunges suddenly to the ground, the saddle going with them, as though some strap had suddenly given way. The horse, now free but for its bridle, kicks its heels up and whinnies, still following the white, enjoying the chase, the play.

The rider on the grey-blue pulls up his steed for only a moment, looking back over their shoulder at their fallen comrade, before obviously cutting their losses and urging their horse on further.

There is something glinting on the waves.

The rider on the first horse has seen it; the pursuer has not.

If it were Geralt, he’d have yanked Roach inland and not looked back even for a moment; evidently the rider on the white has something else in mind, for they continue on a straight course, the blue-grey closing in on the white—

Until the white’s tail is snapping in the blue-grey’s face, and the pursuer can almost lean over—

Something bursts from the sea in a frenzy of white froth and red and snapping jaws, and the white jerks to the left in a spray of sand and surf, heading Geralt’s way.

The blue-grey is in pieces on the beach, two monstrous creatures of the sea with disturbingly horse-like features tearing at it and at one another. The rider is nowhere to be seen.

Geralt stays where he is, clutching Roach’s reins, as the grey gallops towards them. Its snow-white coat is lathered grey with sweat and sea-water, and caked in sand where the beach has been churned beneath its hooves and clung to the coat.

He shields his eyes against the setting sun, trying to decide whether or not to leave the rider and the horse to their fate, or whether he should guard them back to the village. The kelpies behind them seem to have no more interest than they do in the shells that litter the beach, or the rocky outcropping that serves to send waves spraying ten feet or more into the air.

His decision is taken from him when the rider draws near enough for him to make out their face, and he realises with a sinking feeling (more like a _sudden drop_ , but Geralt has never been one for dramatics) that it is Jaskier.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yeah this chapter is kinda shit but i hope u guys enjoy it anwyays! thank u guys for all ur comments, they mean the world to me

Jaskier’s home is beautiful.

Not that Geralt is particularly surprised. Jaskier has always had a penchant for beautiful things.

“The horses?” Geralt asks, the first words he has spoken since they met and stood silent, simply looking at one another, before Jaskier invited him to his home to talk.

“Oh—there is a barn, a little way past the house. I don’t own it, but neither does anybody else, so Roach and Pegasus might as well make use of it.”

“Pegasus?” Geralt questions, carefully looking at the bard out of the corner of his eye, whose countenance he has committed to memory and yet still feels like a well-aimed blow to the gut. Shame burns in him.

“Well, he needs a name, doesn’t he?” Jaskier beams first at the gelding walking at his shoulder, whom they have secured with a rope from Roach’s saddlebags fashioned into a rudimentary halter, and now walks placidly along—a far cry from the lathered beast he had been, racing across the beach. Then he beams at Geralt. The grin is brighter than the sun and drives the breath from Geralt’s lungs even as he craves the sight, the proof that Jaskier is well.

“You’re keeping him, then?” Geralt prods. Even during their travels together, Jaskier had never expressed much interest in acquiring himself a horse, preferring either to walk or, when he permitted, to sit behind Geralt.

“He saved my life! Of course I’m keeping him. He flew like a Pegasus across that beach, away from our attackers, and he ran nearly into that Kelpie when I asked him to. He’s loyal and brave, and he’s staying.”

“Hmm. What are you going to do if you meet a real Pegasus?”

Jaskier looks at him in shock. “I thought they didn’t exist.”

“I’ve never met one,” Geralt admits, “but that isn’t to say they aren’t out there.”

They walk in silence for several moments more, Pegasus chuffing to Roach and the mare laying her ears back in annoyance. This does not seem to deter the gelding, who reaches out with his nose to nudge her flank and receives a flying leg in response.

His ears are still pricked, and Geralt is fiercely reminded of a certain bard trying to befriend a certain witcher, a decade ago.

“Lucky that rider fell when he did,” he comments, trying to fill the silence. He’s unused to being the one trying to make conversation, but there are so many things lying unsaid between them that he cannot _stand_ this quiet. It’s making his teeth itch.

Jaskier shoots him a furtive glance. “Not luck. I—may have cut the bastard’s girth strap when he wasn’t looking.”

 _What?_ Dumbfounded, Geralt asks, “can you… maybe start from the beginning?”

Now Jaskier is grinning outright. “Perhaps I won’t. Perhaps I’ll leave you to wonder and fill in the blanks by yourself, as you did for me every time I wanted to know of one of your hunts for my song.”

 _Fuck_. Quickly, Geralt tries to backtrack and throw out an apology and then another, but Jaskier sees his panicked look before he is able to get any words out and saves them both by talking over him.

Apparently, apologies can wait.

“I was at the market,” Jaskier begins, just as they arrive at the barn. It is not large, made of wood, and one side is taller than the other with the roof at an angle. There is a gap beneath the roof the whole way around, and it is held up by thick beams of wood at regular intervals, so inside it does not smell musty as Geralt had expected of an old barn. The floor is scattered here and there with odd leaves and wisps of straw, but no rat droppings, and there are four well-sized stalls for the horses and a door leading to another room at the far side of the barn.

“I heard a group of men were planning to trap a kelpie, and—well, I thought it might make a splendid song. So, I followed them, thinking I would keep my distance and watch the whole business from afar, and—”

“—and it all went horribly wrong, you got yourself captured, nabbed one of their horses in the escape attempt, and survived only through sheer luck?” Geralt finishes for him. It’s exactly the kind of thing he’d expect from Jaskier.

“They were going to use poor Pegasus as bait! He doesn’t deserve to be eaten,” Jaskier pats the gelding’s nose fondly, before turning. “And besides, there wasn’t that much luck involved—I’ll have you know I am entirely capable on my own, thank you very much.”

“I know you are, Jaskier,” Geralt assures him, and the bard grins. There is a warm feeling developing in his chest that he does not know what to do with. “Just not when you’ve gotten yourself kidnapped, which seems to happen a _lot_ ,” he adds pointedly, and the bard huffs at him.

Geralt falls into step beside the bard as he begins to make his way back towards the house.

It is quiet, but for the distant sound of the sea, and it is perhaps the longest he has ever been in Jaskier’s company while the bard was silent, and were it not so oddly comfortable it would have been unnerving.

The house looks smaller from outside than it likely is inside, he thinks. Built with cut stone and white-washed, and dark, solid timber at the edges; wildflowers grow in thick swathes across the surrounding grounds, and ivy climbs the walls in trailing fingers.

Should the home belong to any other, it likely would be bleak and cold and sorrowful: an empty, haunting presence beside a kelpie-infested sea.

But it is _Jaskier’s_ , and therefore is made of filtered sunbeams and wildflowers and the golden cast of sunlight on the surge, and Geralt realises suddenly that he is hopelessly, _blindingly_ in love.

~~~

“Your home—it’s… lovely,” Geralt tries, as Jaskier sits the both of them down in a bright front room with two glasses and a bottle of wine in hand.

Jaskier smiles faintly. He looks… distinctly uncomfortable—far more discomforted than he was before, anyway. “Ooh,” he murmurs, uncorking the bottle carefully and pouring the both of them a glass. Geralt doesn’t touch his, but Jaskier immediately takes a healthy swig. “Geralt of Rivia, the White Wolf, famous witcher—making small talk. What have I done to you?”

A twisted expression flits across his face, gone in a heartbeat, and Geralt _hurts_ at the sight of this, at the pain he has inflicted on his bard. On the result of his callousness and cruelty; the proof that he isn’t human and never could be.

 _What haven’t you done to me?_ he thinks wryly to himself, remembering the sleepless nights in the intervening time of him last seeing Jaskier and now, the restlessness, the feeling that some vital part of himself had been taken away.

All things considered, he really should have realised his feelings sooner.

Geralt looks at Jaskier’s face; the lines of his years etched gracefully upon it; the sorrow in his eyes that seem to draw his whole demeanour down. _And what haven’t I done to you?_

 _He_ did this. Jaskier’s pain is entirely Geralt’s fault, and he isn’t entirely sure what to do. Something in him, something put there by a century of killing monsters and being sliced into in turn, by a hundred years of the general populace viewing him as something to be feared and reviled, a hundred years of having to hurt others before they hurt him—something in him wants to hurt Jaskier before the bard manages to hurt Geralt further, and he stamps it down with a vengeance.

His next instinct is to throw himself at Jaskier’s feet and beg forgiveness, even though his very nature flinches at the thought.

He doesn’t think Jaskier would accept it, however. Oh, the bard would love the theatrics of Geralt prostrating at his feet, but the sentiment behind it likely wouldn’t translate; Geralt simply isn’t the grovelling type, and they both know it. It wouldn’t be _enough_.

He doesn’t know what to do.

He is _in love_ with Jaskier, and it feels as though a decade of repressing and denying and struggling with the weight of his feelings for this man have come crashing down upon him, and he can barely keep afloat under that awful weight.

They say witchers can’t feel.

Geralt almost wishes it were true.

Because with his realisation comes an inescapable guilt that has turned his bones to lead and his blood to ice.

“Seems like I’ve done more than I thought,” Jaskier murmurs, looking closely at Geralt’s face and frowning, and he wants to bow his head and lay out avowal after confession after averment, telling Jaskier all the ways Jaskier has changed Geralt for the better. Instead he says something else.

“No.”

“No?”

“No,” he repeats. “You didn’t—none of this is your fault, Jaskier. This is mine, _solely_ mine, and—”

“Geralt—okay, Geralt—Geralt?” Jaskier interrupts him, and the witcher clenches his hands into fists before they begin to shake, and the bard blinks back tears before they can fall. Neither of them are handling this well.

“Geralt. I can see that you’re having—a bit of a moment, right now, and I suppose you’re not very used to dealing with your emotions, but I am going to talk and you are going to listen. Okay?”

Geralt looks at him—really looks at him, then says, “okay.”

“No. I _mean this_ , Geralt?”

This time Geralt only nods, and watches a weight lift from the bard’s shoulders. He straightens his spine and his shoulders, lifts his chin, and looks defiantly at the witcher, and Geralt is tumbled suddenly back to years ago, in Cintra, when Jaskier had come to him looking like this and fucked him senseless into a wall. He is reminded of the sole figure galloping bareback across a beach, racing into the maw of a kelpie so as to escape his attackers.

Jaskier is not weak, has never been weak, and he is reminded of it now.

“Right. First of all, and maybe most importantly: I am an _adult_ , Geralt. That means I make my own choices. I _chose_ to stay with you, even though you were hurting me—” Geralt flinches at this bare laying out of the facts, but Jaskier soundly ignores him, “—because for a long time, _it was worth it_.”

He pauses to drain the rest of his glass, and Geralt wordlessly refills it. His mind has latched onto every word the bard has uttered and is disseminating it, turning it over and over in his mind, taking each and every syllable to heart.

“You know,” Jaskier continues, “Yennefer says you never learnt how to have something without breaking it. I just think nobody ever stayed around long enough for you to learn how to—how to have a _relationship_ , be it platonic or romantic or whatever, outside of your witcher friends.”

The bard smiles a little at the end, and Geralt narrows his eyes, wondering which of his _witcher friends_ have apparently payed Jaskier a visit.

And what Jaskier said—perhaps it is true. All of Geralt’s friends are the type he doesn’t see for twenty years, until he’s fighting for his life by their side or getting drunk out of his mind with them, and they swap stories and then go on their separate paths again. Jaskier—sometimes he wouldn’t see Jaskier for weeks or months or sometimes years, but then when he came back they would travel together for weeks and weeks.

And he’s the only person (aside from Yennefer) whom he has regularly fucked, and perhaps he should have known from the beginning that Jaskier would be different.

The bard finally looks up, looks at Geralt properly. “I loved you, Geralt, and you broke my heart, and then I loved you anyway,” he says, very sincerely.

The whirlwind that is his thoughts comes to a halt.

Geralt blinks at him, processing.

“And I’m _okay_. I don’t need you here.”

Geralt considers his next words carefully, before deciding to put Jaskier unequivocally first, as he should have done from the first moment he noticed even a glimmer of feelings for him.

“Then I’ll go,” he rasps out.

“I didn’t say I didn’t _want_ you here.”

This is it, then.

Geralt reaches across the table and takes Jaskier’s hand. “Then I’ll stay,” he says quietly, “for as long as you’ll have me.”

“Great!” Jaskier brightens, and the dark pall that cloaked such a serious conversation finally lifts. “Ground rules: we’re not sleeping together until I know I can trust you, but you can take the spare room.” He looks as though he is desperately trying to clear the air, and Geralt decides to oblige him. They can talk more later if need be.

“That’s more than fair,” he murmurs.

Jaskier smiles at him again, and it is like watching the clouds move out of the way of the sun; he is so much brighter now than he was before their conversation.

“You can help me in the barn,” Jaskier tells him. Geralt pulls a face. “Oh, come on! Yennefer helped me with the house!”

Geralt hadn’t missed that Jaskier and Yennefer are, apparently, friends now, but it’s such an unlikely thing that he isn’t sure how to take it. Trying to imagine Yennefer assisting with the decorations makes his head hurt.

There must be a question on his face, because Jaskier smirks, and winks. “There’s a story for another time, but the short version is: she showed up on my doorstep with plenty of booze and then we got drunk and bitched about you all night. Then she told me this place was a shithole—which to be fair, it was—and spent the next week helping me make it—well, habitable, really.”

This explanation almost raises more questions than it answers, but Geralt chooses to let them lie for now in favour of a more pressing one.

“You’re—settling down?” he ventures.

Jaskier looks _horrified_.

“ _Gods above,_ Geralt! Who do you think I am?” he demands. “No, no, of course not. I just—well, I was sick of staying exclusively in inns, and wanted a place I can come back to, where I can compose. I got this place for almost nothing—the bandits keep away everyone looking for a project home, and the kelpies keep away anyone else.”

Geralt relaxes. It had looked as though Jaskier’s sanity had finally frayed, and the bard’s taste for travelling from court to court, regaling lords and ladies and kings and queens with his songs had withered.

“So,” Geralt interrupts his own train of thought before it can grow more twisted. “This barn. Where do we start?”

~~~

Jaskier feels… rather good about himself after that.

He’s decided, finally, that he needs to stop punishing himself for what is fundamentally beyond his control. Getting this place was the first step; getting Geralt was the second; trying to make a go of… this, of them, will be the _last_ , and together he and Geralt are going to figure out the middle part.

Speaking of, the aforementioned witcher is in Jaskier’s kitchen, soaping and rinsing the wine glasses and leaving them to dry.

He leans against the doorframe to the room, just—watching. Admiring. The slope of Geralt’s back, the movement of his shoulders beneath his shirt, the methodical way he cleans. Jaskier is left to wonder if Geralt has ever been so… _domestic._

“Jaskier?” Geralt’s low rumble draws him out of his thoughts, and—oh. He’s staring. He coughs, ears tinging red, and smiles faintly.

“Yes, erm—we need to see about a delivery of hay and grain and straw, for the horses,” he states, and Geralt nods.

“Where’s the nearest farm? Surely we can visit and talk to them,” the witcher asks him, but Jaskier shakes his head.

“I’ll ask around at the market tomorrow. I’ve a sack of oats I can spare a few handfuls of for the two of them for tonight and tomorrow. That should keep them from colicking tonight, at least,” he explains, but Geralt still looks questioning, so he hastens to further explain, “I’d like to speak to a leather-worker about getting a saddle fitted for Pegasus. And also to see somebody about putting shoes on his feet—surely Roach’s will need looking at as well?”

This is how the evening passes—idle chatter, and with Jaskier trying to ignore the occasional flash of heat in Geralt’s eyes. He doesn’t trust him yet.

They walk together to feed the horses, despite Geralt’s insistence that he can do it by himself. Jaskier introduces himself to the new Roach, who promptly bites him.

“Fuck! What happened to the other Roach?” he demands of Geralt, once the witcher has stopped wheezing with laughter. It’s a new look on him—laughing until he is bent over at the waist, clutching his stomach, and Jaskier thinks he rather likes it.

“Traded her to a farm for this demon,” the witcher explains, patting her affectionately. She bears the attention with ill grace. Jaskier is glad to know that his Roach didn’t get eaten, or something. “She’ll spend her retirement pulling children about in carts and teaching them to ride when they’re bigger.”

Jaskier’s smile is a soft thing, and Geralt struggles with not reaching over and kissing it gently.

“Can we go visit? I’m sure she misses me,” Jaskier asks then, and Geralt fights not to roll his eyes.

“She’s a horse, Jaskier,” he reminds, and the bard’s face falls. “…Maybe if we get time.”

~~~

Finding sleep that night is easy yet torturous. Knowing Jaskier is only a room away, and like as not thinking of him— _trust_ , Geralt reminds himself, over and over. _Jaskier needs to trust him_.

The second bedroom is well lit, with a sloped ceiling and windows spanning almost its entirety; Geralt can count every star in the sky.

The mattress is firm and not too soft, which is often Geralt’s problem after a lifetime of sleeping on the ground, and sleep takes him quickly.

~~~

He wakes the next morning and Jaskier is not in the house.

Geralt finds him outside, watching the sea. The sky is grey, and dark clouds gather on the horizon, and the sea looks like a live thing, wild and untamed and deadly. Especially so, knowing what lies beneath the surface.

“They’ll come out tonight, when the moon’s up. Sometimes they’ll come to the house and look inside. They’ve never tried the door, though. Or the windows,” Jaskier says into the silence, and Geralt grimaces. Curious sea monsters never bode well.

“You’ve seen them?” he asks.

Jaskier bows his head and nods. “They’re not so bad. I leave them be, and they’ve left me be.”

Geralt thinks there is more to it than that. He thinks about prying, pushing for more, but—

But Jaskier is looking at him with soft eyes and a soft mouth and he doesn’t want to harden those features with talk of monsters, so he casts about for another topic instead.

“How are the horses?” he goes with, because it’s an easy topic and because he’s getting antsy, having not seen Roach since yesterday.

He hopes she hasn’t murdered Pegasus yet. She certainly has it in her, he thinks.

“Roach was sleeping flat on her side and didn’t get up the entire time I was there,” Jaskier tells him with furrowed brows and a slow grin. “She’s an odd one.”

“That she is,” Geralt agrees. “Didn’t flinch at any of the kelpie scents or tracks that we found. I was told she’s part farm horse, part lord’s destrier, but I’m half convinced she’s got monster blood in her somewhere.”

Jaskier grins again, and looks out to see. “The sun’s risen. If we leave now, we’ll get to the market just as it opens. You should probably—um—” Jaskier falters, and Geralt tilts his head.

“Jaskier?” he prompts.

“Maybe wash up?” the bard squeaks out, looking apprehensive, and Geralt wonders how many times he’s snapped at Jaskier for encouraging the same thing, that he looks so uncomfortable now.

So he nods, carefully, flicking his gaze away from the bard’s, turning his body slightly so the bulk of his shoulders aren’t so obvious, and, minutely, Jaskier relaxes. It feels like a win.

“The tub, upstairs. The water has to be heated over a fire so it’s probably going to be cold,” he tells him, and Geralt nods, thanks him, and leaves. He’s bathed in streams more times than he’s had hot baths; a bit of cold water won’t hurt him.

A problem, he finds, is that all of his clothes are worn and unclean, and he can’t exactly ask Jaskier to borrow a pair of trousers—the bard might only be a few inches shorter than him at _most_ , but they are of significantly different builds.

There is a knock at the door.

Geralt casts a quick look about him; his trousers are all the way on the other side of the room, and the door is already opening; he hastily covers himself with his towel and meets Jaskier’s eyes dead on.

The bard blushes. “I—um, sorry. I thought you might still be in the tub. I just—here—” he stammers, shoving a bundle of clothes at Geralt and then turning and abruptly leaving.

Geralt drops the towel and unfolds the material; it is a pair of breeches and a shirt, both of which look as though they should fit him, both of which are clean and of good quality.

He resolutely does not consider why Jaskier might have a set of clothes for him to wear on hand.

By the time Jaskier flounces down the stairs wearing leather riding gear Geralt has never seen before and smelling strongly of _Jaskier_ , Geralt’s hair has dried and the sky has darkened further. He cannot smell the rain on the wind, so the storm won’t break for hours yet, but he knows that when it does it will be a bad one.

“Ready?” the bard asks, and Geralt nods his assent, watching Jaskier as he walks away, though he tries his hardest not to.

He just looks so… delectable.

Roach is impatient in her stall while he tacks her up, and she tries to nip him while he tightens her girth. Pegasus is all affection, rubbing his head against Jaskier until he is almost shoved over, and the gelding follows him with pricked ears and bright eyes as he leads him out of the barn.

It is familiar, riding Roach with Jaskier by his side, and Geralt falls back into the easy rhythm. Of course, this time Jaskier is holding a horse rather than a lute, and there is still an uneasy tension between them, but Jaskier begins talking and Geralt tunes him out and it could almost be a year or ten ago, with the two of them on the road travelling nobody-knows-where.

~~~

The market is full of people busily doing nothing.

Animals cry their noises, sellers cry their wares, and everybody seems to be going absolutely nowhere very quickly. Roach lays her ears flat and bulls through the crowds, but Jaskier manages to get swarmed and it is only through sheer luck that Geralt gets to lean down, grasp the bard by the forearm, and pull him up behind him onto Roach’s saddle.

Thankfully, Jaskier very quickly gets with the program, swinging himself around so he is settled more comfortably and managing to hang on to Pegasus, who does not seem at all bothered by the people pressing in on him on all sides.

“We’re in the livestock section,” Jaskier calls into Geralt’s ear, and the flinch has everything to do with the noise and nothing to do with Jaskier’s chest pressed up against his back, his hips held snugly against Geralt’s ass.

He looks over the people before spying tanning racks. Half a moment later, Jaskier’s arm comes up around him and points in the same direction; he nudges Roach forward and she promptly stands on a man’s foot to get him to move out of the way.

Geralt is inclined to leave Jaskier to the haggling. His two swords strapped to his back seem to be working wonders for intimidating the man into offering fairer prices, and Jaskier seems only all too happy to take advantage.

Pegasus is measured quickly and has several saddles placed atop him before they decide on one that fits, and Jaskier is invited to jump aboard and try it out. Pegasus chews on his new bit placidly. Geralt glares holes into the back of Jaskier’s head as he is left behind as the bard’s ‘collateral’; the man shoots him nervous looks from where he is stitching a piece of decorated leather onto a saddle’s skirt, and Geralt wonders when witchers became such commodities that they might be used as _collateral._ On a _saddle_.

The saddle fits, all parties are happy (besides Geralt), and now all they need to find is a farmer willing to bring them grain and roughage and bedding. Jaskier professes himself happy to just get Pegasus’ feet trimmed, what with the relatively soft ground, and it takes a bare few moments for the farrier to clip away the excess heel and toe and compliment the gelding on having extraordinarily good feet for his type.

Roach refuses to go anywhere near the farrier; she flatly plants her feet and glares at Geralt, a mulish gleam in her eye, and he does not want to cause a scene and so he leaves her be—for now. He _will_ have her feet checked. He looks after all his horses and she will be no different.

In the time it takes Geralt to convince Roach that he’s asking her to walk forward so they might _turn around_ , and not to get her feet clipped, Jaskier apparently finds and barters their way into weekly supply deliveries—not only for the horses, but also for Geralt and he, and they leave the market with half a day still to spare.

“—because, you see, the Marquess de Viamar told me that—” Jaskier is saying, chattering blindly about nothing at all and looking at absolutely everything except Geralt, which is good, because Geralt can’t look away.

He just looks so—he cannot think of a _single_ word with which to describe the bard right now. Clad in leather, a knife at his hip, astride his white gelding; Geralt wonders how he never saw this side of Jaskier before.

He wonders if perhaps he _did_ see it, but only in the sense that his eyes saw what they wanted to see. They looked at this incredibly capable man and skipped over all the bits that meant he didn’t need Geralt.

Jaskier looks over then, and catches him staring; rather than look sharply away or break off from talking, he winks carelessly, then continues on with a piece of court gossip he has absolutely no reason nor even way of knowing.

~~~

The storm is worse than Geralt feared, and the kelpies scream at one another from the sands while Geralt and Jaskier watch them from the big windows of the front room.

“Have you ever killed a kelpie?” Jaskier asks him, a hand at his throat.

“Yes.” He doesn’t elaborate, and Jaskier seems to settle.

They light a fire. It manages to banish some of the dampness in the air, but Jaskier still looks worried, so Geralt sits him down and brings down the blankets from the bedrooms and drapes him in them, until he is no longer shivering and is watching him with an unaccountably amused expression.

“Cosy,” he comments, flipping the corner of one of the blankets backwards and forth.

“Hm,” Geralt says; he stands still at the window, watching the shadows of horses and men chase one another across the wide swathes of sand. They haven’t come near the house at all yet, but Geralt prefers to keep a lookout.

“—Geralt,” he realises Jaskier is calling him, and he turns and takes in the view.

…If he were a lesser man, he might call it _cute_.

“Will you sit with me?” the bard asks him, and Geralt finds he cannot refuse.

Several minutes later he is situated under swathes of blankets himself, pulled up above his head; if Vesemir could see him now, he’d laugh himself sick: Geralt of Rivia, the White Wolf, the Butcher of Blaviken—swaddled in blankets alongside a frightened bard, telling stories of fights and adventures from decades ago to chase away the silence.

Ordinarily, it is Jaskier who is filling the silence between them; this time, it is Geralt scraping for things to say, to calm the tension that is so palpable in Jaskier’s expression.

Then something _screams_ , high and shrill and pealing, and it sounds like the ringing in one’s ear when it collides against the ground except _so much worse_ somehow, and Jaskier abandons all pretence of dignity and instead launches himself directly into Geralt’s chest, eliciting a small huff from the witcher, and burrowing.

“Geralt—I know I said that we couldn’t—but I’m _really scared_ and I don’t—want to die, not when I’ve just got you back—not when I don’t think I can _have you yet—”_

Geralt places a hand on the back of Jaskier’s neck, and rubs. It serves to calm to bard enough that he might listen.

“Jaskier,” he rumbles, deep in his chest, hoping the bard can feel it. Hoping it will calm him. “I’m yours, Jaskier, for as long as you’ll have me. This is—this can just be for tonight, if you want,” Geralt tells him hoarsely, and Jaskier nods miserably and buries further into the witcher’s embrace.

Geralt arranges them so that they are laid across the couch, with Jaskier buried between Geralt and the cushions of its back and covered with what is probably far too many blankets, but he only wriggles closer into Geralt and shakes like a leaf.

Geralt doesn’t say anything. Not a thing. He just rests his chin atop Jaskier’s head and allows him to entwine his legs with his own, and thinks about all the years he could have held him like this. Wonders why he spent all of them refusing to do so.

And he holds Jaskier until morning.

~~~

Dawn breaks with clear skies, and there is a kelpie dead on the beach.

Geralt can smell it no matter where in the house he is. He left Jaskier on the couch, not wanting the awkwardness of having to extract themselves from one another in the morning, and so he slipped away quietly upstairs to meditate, figuring he’ll wait until Jaskier actually wakes to leave the house.

The night must have exhausted him, because it is several hours after day-break when Jaskier finally rouses, and when he does he is groggy and grouchy and clutching the blankets to him with slow-blinking eyes while Geralt shoves a mug of hot chocolate into his hands, with a pastry filled with far too much chocolate and an orange he isn’t sure the bard will eat, but at least is something healthy among all the sugar.

“Dead kelpie?” the bard repeats, his brain still slow with sleep, and Geralt nods patiently.

“Mmm. Should probably check it out.” The bard yawns, and stands, and squawks when he loses his balances and flops right back down again, Geralt neatly taking the cup from his hands and fixing Jaskier with a look.

“…maybe I should wash up a bit first,” the bard grumbles, and Geralt hands him the mug back silently.

Geralt makes his way onto the beach alone, and immediately he knows that something is wrong.

For one, the kelpies are swimming in the shore, alarmingly close to him, and yet there is no prickling of his senses, nothing from his medallion, nothing to tell him that there is danger nearby. They’re just _there_. _Watching_ him.

And two, the body on the beach isn’t a horse; it’s a girl. A young one, it looks like, although kelpies, like most creatures, don’t age as humans do. Her hair is a red fall about her head, almost like a halo, and Geralt can’t tell where the wound is that killed her until he realises her hair is _white_ , like his—only soaked through with blood.

Gingerly, he takes her jaw and turns her head; there, beneath the silvery locks, is a gash that must have killed her quickly if not cleanly.

It certainly wasn’t made by a horse, and he doubts very much it was made by a human, either. He lays her head back where it was.

Then he stands, and looks out across the sea.

There are hundreds of them, cartwheeling and diving and breaking very slightly above the surface, playing with one another in some cases, but every single one of them, he knows, is watching him. Waiting to see what he will do next.

He looks back down at the kelpie. He can’t leave her here; thrill seekers and monster hunters and wizards will make a spectacle of her, he knows.

Jaskier comes to stand beside him, silent for once.

“So that’s a kelpie,” the bard says, his voice very faint; he sounds like he might be sick.

Geralt doesn’t reply. Instead he bends, and lifts her in his arms, and she’s slippery and cold and crusted with salt, and she didn’t deserve to die.

It takes hours and yet no time at all to bring her to the water’s edge, and he lays her in the surf, and then he and Jaskier back away from the sea and all her dangers, and watch as hands erupt from the sea foam to drag her away, down into the depths, where they can bury her with their secret rites and ensure that she finds peace in the afterlife.

The Geralt goes back to where she had lain, and scents the sand again. Just to be sure.

“What happened to her?” Jaskier asks him, his natural exuberance very muted. He’d shaken with fear at their play last night, but he hadn’t wanted them _dead_.

“Conriocht,” Geralt tells him, and Jaskier looks blank.

“A—kind of werewolf,” he explains, and Jaskier looks back at the sea, his expression stormy. “Their first change is the easiest. And then it gets harder and harder and harder, and they spend longer and longer as the wolf, until one day they shed their human skin for good, and, as time goes on, they forget that they were human entirely. Every single one I’ve ever met, I’ve killed. They can’t be saved, and there’s no cure.”

They both spend several minutes standing silently, unsure of what to say. Unsure of what _can_ be said.

The morning is spent tracking, but the sea has washed away all traces of the conriocht, and by the time the sun is at its zenith and the sea is back out again, the scent is lost and all they can do is return to the house.

“Will it come back?” Jaskier asks him, and Geralt shrugs.

“It didn’t eat her,” he reasons, “maybe it didn’t like the taste. Or maybe it wasn’t hunting for food. Maybe it liked the sport of hunting and killing a kelpie. The fact that her family abandoned her… that’s odd; it must have driven them away somehow.”

“Would they have stayed, then?”

“They’re a herd,” Geralt stays simply. “They stick together.”

He spends the afternoon sharpening his swords, and Jaskier goes to spend time with the horses, his expression troubled. By the time he returns the sky is beginning to darken again and the winds over the sea have swept in a new storm, and this time they stay downstairs and listen not because Jaskier is frightened, but because there is a monster out there murdering—even if its only murdering other monsters—and they are going to stop him.

Jaskier takes Geralt’s hand while they wait.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> for ur guys' informtation: 'conriocht' is just a celtic word for werewolf, and i took some artistic license with the rest of it. i figured since kelpies are celtic and ive grown up on celtic stories i might as well continue the theme! i know the original witcher series is polish but--well. monsters and fairytales are monsters and fairytales, no matter where they're from. dont forget to hit kudos and leave a comment and hopefully the next chapter will be better ;)


	3. Chapter 3

The conriocht doesn’t come again that night, but neither do the kelpies.

For a week, Geralt keeps watch over the beach, and by the end of it the kelpies are out playing and fighting again like nothing happened, and there are no murderous wolves out to eat them.

“How do you know it’s a conriocht?” Jaskier asks him one morning over breakfast; they have taken to eating together in the mornings and the evenings, while Geralt does repair work on the barn during the day and Jaskier—writes, he supposes, and sings, and… he isn’t _entirely_ sure what the bard gets up to during his days, but he’s not going to pry.

“How do you mean?”

“I mean—how do you know it isn’t just a normal werewolf?”

“The moon wasn’t full, the night the kelpie was killed. Wasn’t even close to it. But it _was_ a werewolf bite; it’d grabbed her by the back of the head in its jaws, and the pattern was that of a wolf’s—only much bigger.”

The explanation seems to satisfy Jaskier, who hums and bites into his pastry with a thoughtful expression.

Early that afternoon, there is a knock at their door.

Geralt wonders when he began to consider the door _theirs_ , and quickly amends it in his head. He has absolutely no right to that door.

Jaskier answers it, and his cheerful greeting quickly becomes suspicious and Geralt feels a prickle down his spine as he goes to investigate.

There is a horde at the door.

Well—not quite a _horde_ ; seven villagers with stony expressions and ragged clothing don’t quite constitute a horde, but Jaskier looks very small in the doorway against the seven of them and Geralt hastens to fill the rest of the space with his own presence. Jaskier sways back against him, very slightly, _just_ pressing his back against Geralt’s chest and then moving away again—almost as though for comfort rather than by accident, which is what Geralt tells himself it is. _Boundaries_ , he reminds himself firmly.

“Can we help you, gentlemen?” he asks genially, and the apparent spokesperson falters at Geralt’s white hair, his gold eyes, his height and broadness. The villagers behind him seem to become smaller, somehow.

“Y—yes, you can,” he recovers. “It’s about the kelpies—”

“Those _fucking monsters_ ,” somebody behind him hisses, and Geralt fixes the man with a piercing stare that isn’t quite a _glare_ —more a well placed warning. The man subsides.

“What about the kelpies?” Jaskier asks, all smiles and helpfulness.

“Can you kill them?” the spokesman asks, looking directly at Geralt, his eyes flicking down to the witcher medallion at his chest. Jaskier swells with indignation.

“No,” Geralt responds before Jaskier gets himself killed.

“Oh? After all the stories we’ve heard of you? Can’t kill a few horses?” the villager asks, and Geralt offers him a banal smile, before reaching up and gripping the doorway just below where the other man has lounged against it. He quickly retracts his hand.

“Oh, I can kill a few horses—what I mean is, I _won’t_ ,” he tells them, that smile still fixed in place, and the villagers shift uneasily. They hadn’t expected this.

“Why not?” one of the others shouts—a young one, his face twisted with fury, and Geralt wonders who he has lost.

“Why should I?” Geralt asks him.

“They kill people.” There is a murmur of agreement, and Geralt despairs. Kelpies kill people in the same way jumping off a cliff would kill people; they’re deadly, yes, but there is a _choice_ involved in their manner of murder, and you treat them as you would treat a particularly vicious dog: with distance.

“Men kill people,” is what he says instead. “Falling trees kill people. Hunger kills people. Dying is the way of the world; I’m not going to slaughter an entire herd of creatures simply because you don’t like them.”

The mood of the group abruptly changes. Whereas before it had been uneasy, and hopeful, and frightened, and upset, and angry—now it becomes a seething, furious nest of vipers, all of them in striking position. Their eyes when they look at him spell only hatred.

“My sister went off with one of them and didn’t ever come back!” the youth from before spits, and Geralt tilts his head at him.

“Your sister made that choice,” he tells him.

“There ain’t no _choices_ with these monsters. They sing—they call to you, and you’ve no choice but to go off with ‘em,” a man who has up until now been largely silent, a brooding, looming presence, speaks up, and the group immediately defer to him.

 _Interesting_ , Geralt notes. They treat him like he’s the leader.

“Yes, they sing,” Geralt nods his head, agreeing with them. “But if you’re close enough to hear them sing, you’ve walked right up to one of them, and that was your choice to make. You wouldn’t walk up to a bristling dog, slavering at the mouth, now would you?”

“No, I’d shoot it,” seems to be the general consensus, and Geralt tries a different approach.

“If you jumped off a cliff, you’d expect to die,” he tells them, and they narrow their eyes at him. “If you walk up to a kelpie to hear it sing, you expect to die. But if you leave one be—if you keep your distance—they’re perfectly happy to leave _you_ be.”

This does not placate the villagers any further, and Jaskier (whom Geralt had almost forgotten was there) presses back against him entirely as they all take a step forward, faces twisted into something barely human with rage, fists clenched and foul words on their tongues. Geralt takes himself and Jaskier back and closes the door on their faces.

“My swords,” he tells the bard, just as the solid wood door jumps in its frame, and Jaskier runs to find them.

The next time the door is open, Geralt is behind it with both swords at the ready, and the villagers who had previously been ready to murder him all take a collective deep breath and step back at the sight of their lethal edges.

“I won’t kill the kelpies,” he tells them, and the spokesperson from before nods hurriedly before turning and leaving.

The man whom Geralt had marked as the leader is the last to leave; he gives Geralt a serious once-over, before nodding apparently to himself and leaving.

“What a fun encounter. I _love_ meeting the neighbours. Do you think they’d be willing to lend a _cup of sugar_ , Geralt? Maybe an egg? Or—ooh, maybe I should bake a cake,” Jaskier cuts off his own spiralling anxiety with thoughts of baking, and Geralt watches him wander into the kitchen bemusedly before shaking his head.

The bard is in a strange mood, it seems.

He goes and puts his swords away, before mentioning to Jaskier he is going to go check on the horses. The bard barely nods his head, engrossed as he is in the pile of ingredients he has before him.

Geralt hopes against hope that he won’t return to smoking cinders, instead of a house.

Pegasus lifts his head and nickers to him as soon as he enters the barn; he’d had his head buried in the new manger Geralt had installed for both him and Roach, and he stretches out his neck and begs for a pat as he passes him.

Geralt gives him a pat.

Roach ignores him soundly; she has a mouthful of hay and spits it out to grab another mouthful, and he frowns. He hopes there isn’t anything wrong with her teeth.

Then she turns away entirely and shows him her ass, and he thinks maybe she was just showing him how very much she is ignoring him. He grins slightly to himself, grabs a brush from her shelf, and lets himself into her stable. She lays her ears back and eyes him with suspicion, until he begins grooming her, before she allows herself to turn back to her hay and enjoy his ministrations.

By the time she is clean and he is grubby, the air has chilled and he wonders if the horses will need to be rugged tonight. Roach likely will be fine, stocky and stubborn creature that she is, but Pegasus is more fine-boned than she and a pampered creature besides, so he grabs a blanket for him before he sets about laying straw down for their beds.

The gelding apparently cannot show his thanks enough; he rubs his head against Geralt the entire time the witcher is putting down his bed, and Geralt growls at him, deep in his throat, to try to get him to back off. No such luck.

Apparently, he has as few survival instincts as his owner.

Geralt feeds them, then leaves for the house, which is thankfully still standing. The sky isn’t dark _yet_ , but the world around him is grey and he knows it won’t be long.

Jaskier greets him with a cupcake in hand, decorated with frosting that is a rather violent shade of pink.

It is on Jaskier’s face, and Geralt allows himself to smile.

“Take it!” the bard encourages him, and so Geralt gingerly takes the cupcake from Jaskier’s hand and then looks helplessly at it.

“Go on, eat it. Tell me what you think.” The bard waggles his eyebrows at Geralt, and he resigns himself to having to eat this thing in order to please him.

The taste is… not offensive to him, so he offers the bard a raised brow and licks the frosting off of the top, very deliberately, delighting in the way he flushed crimson and busied himself with cleaning up the counters in the kitchen. There isn’t quite as much mess as Geralt had been expecting.

“Geralt,” the bard begins, and something about his tone makes Geralt pause, though he cannot pinpoint exactly what it is.

“Yes?”

“There’s—” he starts, then abruptly cuts himself off.

Geralt doesn’t push.

Jaskier collects himself, then starts again. “Those men, from before. They—you don’t think they’ll come back, do you?”

“If they do, I’ll be waiting.”

“And what about—what about when you leave?”

Ah, there it is. Geralt winces to himself. He’s broken this man’s faith more than he thought.

“Jaskier,” he says, low, and the bard pauses. “Jaskier,” he repeats, so the bard will look at him. “I mean what I said. I’m staying, for as long as you’ll have me.”

Jaskier puts down his rag, then, not breaking Geralt’s gaze, walks over to him purposefully.

Geralt braces himself. For what, he isn’t sure, but he braces himself all the same.

Then Jaskier is reaching up, and Geralt is subjected to what he thinks might be the first hug he has ever had.

Jaskier rests his head on his shoulder. His arms come up around Geralt’s back, holding him tightly, and Geralt acts on instinct, bringing his arms up around Jaskier. Holding him _back_.

It’s nice, he thinks distantly.

Jaskier moves his head, presses it against Geralt’s, and his chest feels suddenly tight and he squeezes the bard all the tighter.

~~~

The conriocht comes again that night, and the next morning they find two dead kelpies.

They throw them back to the sea, their brethren watching, and for a week afterward their nights are as silent as the grave, the sea monsters preferring to stay in the sea rather than chancing the conriocht’s teeth and claws again.

~~~

Geralt takes Roach and goes to the next town over, and then the next, and the next, until he finds a contract for a creature taking cattle.

He hunts the tracks he finds deep into the woods, the trees tall sentinels around him, Roach winding her way around trunks that are thicker about than three men standing together. The ground crunches underfoot; plants and roots grow asunder, threatening to trip any who might walk there.

He finds the creatures; a pack of wolves, rabid and insane, and he puts all of them to the sword. He takes a pelt and a head and a handful of fangs and calls it a day; Roach snuffles his hair as he sets up the fire for their camp, and Geralt feels horribly, horribly alone as he goes to sleep that night.

The coin isn’t much, but he pockets it all the same and brings it back to Jaskier, who hums when he sees it and asks whether Pegasus looks like he might need shoes putting on. Geralt replies in the negative, and the conversation is domestic and touches on nothing of any particular importance, and if the rest of Geralt’s life was this—hunting monsters and then returning home to Jaskier—he supposes he would be content.

Then it is Jaskier who leaves Geralt in the house, travelling down the coast for three days to sing in some lord’s court, and he returns with a spring in his step and a smile upon his face, and their home is filled with music that night when a few of their neighbours come around with food and drink and they celebrate some festival native to the village, and Geralt thinks that Jaskier might be content with this, too.

That night, when everybody has left, Jaskier takes Geralt’s face in his hands and kisses him chastely, and then presses their foreheads together.

Geralt settles his hands on Jaskier’s hips. “Let’s take this slowly,” he suggests, his voice low and gentle and calming, and tension bleeds out of Jaskier’s shoulders.

“Thank you,” the bard whispers, kissing him again.

~~~

Two weeks later, Jaskier is sitting on the couch before a roaring fire, mending clothes. Geralt sits placidly at his feet, checking over the stitching on Roach’s saddle and carefully cleaning her bridle. He needs to check his armour, too—he hasn’t sat down and properly checked all of the panels in weeks, and it might mean his death if any of the leather or the stiches had begun to rot.

Jaskier’s legs are a warm, solid presence against his back, and he finds himself relaxing into them.

“Do you suppose this conriocht is still turning back into a man? Or is he just—eternal wolf, now?” Jaskier suddenly speaks up, and Geralt tilts his head back, resting it against Jaskier’s knees, thinking.

“The gaps between the killings are too large. He’s turning back into a man—although probably not for very long. And he’s probably only hunting the kelpies at the moment, since I’ve not heard anything from the village about murdered humans, or there’d be an uproar and my services likely would have been requested.”

Jaskier considers this. “Do you think he’ll start to kill humans?”

Geralt nods. “He won’t be able to help himself. It’s only a matter of time. The change will take him by surprise one day, and he’ll end up killing his wife, or his mother, or his son, and then the villagers will go after him, and blood will be spilt.”

“How grim,” Jaskier comments lightly, and Geralt smiles faintly to himself.

“It’s the way these things go. I’ve seen a thousand stories like it, and I’ll see a thousand stories more. Until werecreatures are gone completely, until my services are no longer needed in any corner of this world, then stories like this one will keep on happening.”

Jaskier clears his throat. “Yes, well—maybe we can stop this one?”

Geralt smiles. “I’m not sure—”

“Please, Geralt.”

The witcher puts aside his tack, then turns and climbs onto the couch, settling himself beside the bard.

“What has been done to him—it can’t be undone,” he tells Jaskier, who only looks more wretched.

“Is there nowhere we can send him? No forest, no mountain—no place uninhabited by humans, where he can run free?”

“He’ll be a _thing_ , Jaskier. A human in a monster’s body, craving the blood of his own people. He’ll run from anywhere we take him, searching for something to sate his hunger until he finds a village and puts them to slaughter.”

Jaskier is silent, but he reaches out and grips Geralt’s hand in his.

“It’s awful,” he says sadly, and Geralt grips his hand back.

“It is,” the witcher says. “If we find out whomever this man is before he reveals himself to his village—we might be able to save his family, his friends.”

Jaskier takes his meaning immediately, and his mouth tightens, but he nods. “Thank you,” he tells him, even though Geralt hasn’t particularly done anything, and then he leans forward and presses a kiss to the corner of his mouth, and Geralt lets him.

The bard crawls forward, and kisses him again, and again, and then—

And then he is in Geralt’s lap, and his tongue has slipped into the witcher’s mouth and Geralt is finding it very hard to keep his hands on the bard’s waist and not slip them further down.

When Geralt groans into Jaskier’s mouth, the bard breaks away with a gasp, his chest heaving, and then he presses their foreheads together in what has become a somewhat customary position for them.

“I love you,” Geralt tells him, quite by accident, and Jaskier looks at him in surprise.

“You—do you know how long I have waited to hear that?” he asks him, before kissing him again.

They don’t go any further that night, but Geralt wakes up the next morning in Jaskier’s arms. Geralt’s own bedroom returns to being the spare room.

~~~

Jaskier is making dinner, a song on his lips, and Geralt is on the floor, cleaning his swords.

Then there is a knock at the door.

Dusk lays heavily on the landscape outside, and nobody ventures out this close to the sea during the night.

Geralt gets to his feet, shooting Jaskier a look that very firmly says _stay here_.

Jaskier clenches his jaw and glares right back. _Like hell I will_.

Geralt bites back a smile, grabs his sword from where it leans against the fireplace, and approaches the door more cautiously than he would have done had Jaskier not been a half step behind.

Kelpies smell of rust and blood and of the sea, and the sea is a mile away and there is no scent of rust nor blood to speak of beyond the door, so he opens it a crack.

The man from the other night, the leader of those men—the one who hadn’t spoken—looks at him with silver eyes.

“May I come in?” he drawls, though the nonchalance of his tone is betrayed by the panic in his eyes, and Jaskier reaches out from behind Geralt to open the door fully. Beyond him, at the shoreline, something screams.

“I’m Jaskier,” the bard introduces himself, pushing a cup of ale into the man’s shaking hands. Geralt can smell him better now, and there _is_ a smell of blood about him—old blood, and faint, but there.

“And this is Geralt.” Jaskier indicates the witcher with a fond smile and a careless flip of his hand. “He’s grumpy. Don’t mind him. Can you… tell us why you’re here?” Jaskier almost trails off, but recovers admirably, when the man finally takes a healthy gulp of the ale, then screws his face up and bares rather frightening fangs at it in a growl.

Geralt shifts his weight, and the man shoots him a nearly imperceptible glance.

“I’m—months ago, I was bitten. I thought I had it under control. But…”

“You’re the conriocht,” Geralt says, and the man looks at him and nods.

“Ooh,” Jaskier comments, but neither man looks away. Silver and gold gazes locked together. Jaskier looks utterly entranced.

The other man looks away first, a growl rising and dying in his throat, and Geralt stands down too at Jaskier’s furtive look.

“Why are you here, then?” Jaskier asks the man, refilling his ale.

Geralt knows very well why he is here.

“You’ll have to say it,” Geralt tells him.

“Cruel.”

“Yes, he is,” Jaskier agrees, shooting Geralt an unreadable glance. Geralt ignores it—he has to, here. What this man is asking for… Geralt has to hear him _say_ it.

“I need you to kill me.”

“Hm.”

Jaskier sits down.

“Please—I can’t—I _cannot_ live like this anymore. I can feel it—the wolf, it gets stronger every time. I thought the sea—I thought moving to the sea might… help. Might deflect the moon’s influence away from me. All it’s done is put kelpies on my menu,” the man laughs bitterly, and Geralt nods.

“Very well,” he agrees, and the man stands. He braces himself.

“Oh—no, no. You can do this outside,” Jaskier tells them both, and Geralt smiles.

“What—do you want done? Afterward?” Geralt asks him carefully.

The man looks away, out to where the sea crashes against the sand, where the kelpies swim beneath its black surface.

“I always hated the fucking sea,” he says. “Burning was good enough for my parents; it’s good enough for me.”

The sun is on the horizon when they make their way outside, and a crescent moon shines brightly behind them. The sea is gilded both gold and silver and the waves are broken by the backs of man and beast as they swim beneath the surface.

Geralt takes the man’s head off with one swift cut of his silver sword, and blood sprays onto the ground for barely a moment before the body falls and the blood begins to soak into the dirt.

Jaskier’s arms wrap around his waist from behind, and his chin rests on Geralt’s shoulder, looking at the body, looking out to the sea.

“We need to burn him,” Geralt says, and Jaskier releases him.

“Now?” the bard asks, shivering in the cool night air, looking pointedly at the ocean, where figures are beginning to emerge from the surf.

“Now,” Geralt agrees, and Jaskier does not argue with him.

Rather, he helps with collecting driftwood off the beach, shying away from the screams and warbles of the creatures at the shoreline, helping Geralt build a great pyre.

He helps Geralt heave the body into its centre (though admittedly Geralt did most of the heavy lifting). He stands by as Geralt sets the whole business alight with a few muttered words and a gesture, and grips his hand tightly as the flames lick at the wood, and then at the poor man’s body.

He didn’t even get his _name_ —but he supposes that doesn’t matter, now. He’s gone, and soon he’ll be ash, scattered on the wind.

It takes all night, and the kelpies keep close to the water, unnerved by the fire and by the witcher and the smell of the conriocht burning, and Jaskier and Geralt watch the pyre burn until it is nothing but embers.

They sleep until the sun is at the highest point in the sky, and the sea is right in, and the remains of the pyre are at the bottom of the sea.

“Are you alright?” Geralt asks him, and Jaskier doesn’t know. The whole story—it’s so _tragic_ , and there’s no chance for a happy ending, and he won’t ever write a song about this—or if he does, it won’t be one he sings in taverns and courts and the like. Not a single character in this story deserves to have their tale butchered.

“You will be,” Geralt tells him then, and the surety in his tone steadies him, allows him to breathe deeply and continue on.

~~~

Pegasus has a lot to say when Jaskier sees him next.

“Is that so?” the bard laughs, and Pegasus nickers right back, pawing at the ground under Jaskier’s careful ministrations with the comb. He’s untangling the gelding’s mane, brushing iit out so that the silken strands lay flat against his neck. There is a basket of flowers in the corner of the stable with which he means to braid the horse’s mane, should the gelding remain patient enough to do so.

“Yes, I think he’s very handsome too,” Jaskier sighs to Pegasus, who snorts. “And—yes, he’s certainly been better, these last few months. But—” He doesn’t know how to continue. He doesn’t know how to put what he’s feeling, what he’s thinking, into words.

Behind him, Roach chuffs quietly, and he smiles to himself. “I suppose it doesn’t particularly matter, does it? I won’t know for sure that he’s going to stay. It might take ten months or ten years, and he still might leave me—I’m just going to have to take that chance, aren’t I.”

Pegasus turns around and snuffles at his sleeve, and Jaskier continues coming out his mane.

“Maybe I should trim this, just a bit,” he murmurs to himself, running his fingers through the silken strands. Then he sighs. “Truth be told—I don’t know that I can go through all this again—if Geralt ends up breaking my heart, I don’t know that I’ll ever be able to—to love anyone again,” he tells the gelding forlornly, and Pegasus is, for once, quiet.

He begins braiding in the flowers. He goes slowly, first sectioning the mane into bunches, securing them with leather bands, the same that Geralt uses to tie his own hair back. Then he plaits each section, weaving in daisies and poppies and dandelions and buttercups, and foxglove and violets and cornflowers, and by the time he is nearly done he thinks he knows what he is going to do.

“It’ll be worth it, won’t it?” he says to Pegasus, and he phrases it as a question, but he already knows the answer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you all for all the love for this fic! im so pleased so many of you like it <3 one more chapter to go and then we're done with this, folks!


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the final chapter! the start of it feels a bit rushed i guess but please enjoy anyway
> 
> also pleased be warned that the sex becomes a little bit much for geralt in the beginning of this so if you can think of any tags i should add to stop people being triggered please let me know, i want everyone to be as safe as they can in fandom spaces and im really not sure how it should be tagged! all help much appreciated"

Geralt is glaring at a broken seam in one of his shirts like it has personally offended him when Jaskier finds him.

The witcher looks up, and his face immediately softens, and Jaskier knows that he will let this man break his heart a hundred times, a thousand, before he lets him go again.

“I love you,” he says.

“I love _you_ ,” the witcher replies, and Jaskier’s entire body _burns_ , from the top of his head to the tip of his toes, with the emotion that swells in him upon hearing those words. His feelings are too large for his body; they are larger than life, and he trembles with them.

He sweeps forward, he takes Geralt’s face in his hands, he tells him “I love you,” again, just to hear the witcher repeat it, and he kisses him soundly.

It’s a good kiss. It’s a _loving_ kiss, and he has shared so very few of these, and he hopes to spend a lifetime sharing more of them.

“I love you,” he repeats, and Geralt murmurs it back as he hoists Jaskier up and the bard wraps his legs around the witcher’s waist.

“I love you,” he tells him, as Geralt navigates their way upstairs.

“I love you,” he breathes, as Geralt lays him carefully on the bed.

“ _Gods—_ I— _love you_ ,” he chokes out, as Geralt crawls over him. His hands begin to fiddle with the fastenings on Jaskier’s shirt.

“Is this okay?” the witcher asks him, each time he goes to remove a piece of clothing, and Jaskier can’t nod enthusiastically enough.

“Gods, _please_ , Geralt,” he moans, clutching Geralt’s hair as the witcher sucks and bites at his neck, at his nipples, at his thighs. When the witcher takes his cock into his mouth, it is the most euphoric moment of Jaskier’s life, and the image of Geralt’s lips stretched wetly about his member, taking him in, his golden eyes flicking up to catch Jaskier’s gaze, will always be imprinted in his memory. He will treasure this always.

Geralt takes his time working him up, using every trick he knows and all the ways he’s learnt to take Jaskier apart and leave him a shivering, drooling _mess_.

By the time Jaskier tips over that precipice into his long-anticipated release, he’s slicked with sweat and spit and pre-come, and his mind is so fogged he barely remembers his own _name_ , and he screams so loudly he thinks he hears, distantly, a kelpie screaming back at him.

He recovers to find Geralt sprawled beside him in bed, one large hand swiping down his side, over and over again—petting him. It’s lovely. Geralt watches him with a mixture of awe and exasperation, and Jaskier forces himself to consciousness.

“Back, now?” Geralt asks him, a smug little smile rather distractingly playing at his lips, and Jaskier swats him.

“Yes. Now turn over.” Geralt raises his eyes at the order, but complies, laying on his stomach. He begins to look a little apprehensive when Jaskier hauls himself up and positions himself between Geralt’s legs, but allows the bard his unspoken request.

He tenses every muscle he _has_ when Jaskier parts his cheeks and blows warm air over his hole, and it is like watching a miracle happen—his back ripples like the sea, and at the sight of his utter physical prowess Jaskier finds his mouth watering. Knowing that this man will submit to _him_ , loves _him_ , is doing wonders for his ego.

He dips his head and licks boldly over Geralt’s hole, and the witcher manages to keep his hips in place (grinding them into the sheets a little, but Jaskier forgives him this) but arches his back and lifts his head cleanly off the bed, gasping out a growl.

“Keep still,” Jaskier chides, placing a hand in the centre of Geralt’s shoulder blades and shoving him down, and the witcher goes easily despite being able to snap Jaskier in half. There is something about relinquishing control that Geralt particularly likes, he thinks.

“If you move again, I’ll stop,” Jaskier warns him, and Geralt moans out loud, all smugness and cockiness and arrogance from before now gone, and nods his head desperately.

Jaskier returns to his work, licking and sucking and teasing Geralt, until his hole is red and slick and fluttering under his ministrations.

Jaskier keeps a vial of oil in a draw by his bedside, and he retrieves it now, showing Geralt what it is as he draws it from where he keeps it. “Is this alright?” he asks him, and Geralt is nearly too gone for words but he manages a slurred _‘yes’_.

He takes his time in slicking his fingers, and pours oil over Geralt’s crease and balls and cock, too, for no other reason than to make a mess of him, and Geralt _yowls_ when Jaskier finally deigns to give him some attention. He slips his fingers from Geralt’s hole, down to his balls, fondling them gently, trailing a single finger up and down his cock as lightly as he can manage.

Then he trails his finger up, up, and circles at his hole—before taking it away again.

He pours more oil over Geralt, and repeats the process.

Over and over, he lightly teases the witcher, adding more and more oil, until the sheets are utterly, utterly ruined, and Geralt is trying his hardest not to rut his hips, and is trembling at every point.

Jaskier slaps his ass, just playfully. “No _moving_ ,” he reminds the witcher.

“ _Please_ , Jaskier— _please_ , I’ll be good, I won’t leave you, not _ever_ , just _please_ —” Geralt sobs out, and Jaskier feels his heart drop at Geralt’s words.

Immediately he crawls forward, pressing himself down over Geralt, reassuring him with his weight and his presence, and the witcher’s shaking subsides just a little.

“Geralt, Geralt—it’s alright,” he whispers, pressing his lips to the witcher’s cheek where he has his head turned on its side. Salty tears cling to his lips. “It’s alright. I’m not—this isn’t punishment, my love, I promise you.” The endearment falls from his tongue easily, and it feels _right_ , and Geralt swallows and nods. “This will feel good. I’ll stop teasing you—I’ll go slow, but I’ll stop teasing you, sweetheart, I promise.”

Perhaps it was too much, for this first time, Jaskier reflects. He circles Geralt’s hole once more before pushing in, and he slips in easily, all the way up to the second knuckle.

“You’re so good for me, Geralt—so good,” he coos, rubbing a hand over the witcher’s flank, soothing and arousing all at once.

His first finger has gone in all the way, and he rubs it in and out before adding a second, and Geralt groans, deep in his chest.

“Are you alright? Ready for more?” Jaskier asks him, checking that he’s okay, that this isn’t too much—

“ _If you don’t fucking hurry up I swear to the_ gods _, Jaskier_ —” Geralt swears, his tone needy and whiny and desperate and not at all his usual intimidating rasp, and Jaskier smiles to himself as he adds a third finger.

He spreads and curls his fingers, stretching Geralt out, mindful that he likely hasn’t been fucked by anything in a good long while, and takes his sweet time rubbing over that spot inside him that makes his toes curl and his mind go blank.

Then Jaskier is lining himself up, and pushing in is like—

It’s like—

It’s like nothing else.

It’s so completely unlike when he’d fucked Geralt in Cintra, all those years ago—that had been furious, rough sex against a _wall_ , for Melitele’s sake, with the threat of anybody coming across them, and Jaskier had finished and then left Geralt there, uncaring of whether the witcher was alright—knowing he’d be better off without Jaskier than Jaskier was without him.

And now here they are, and Jaskier holds _all_ the cards, and Geralt is a crying, needy mess beneath him, and it’s _tight_ —

It’s a good job Jaskier has come once already tonight and is still feeling twinges of overstimulation, because that first slide in might have finished him.

Geralt is trying to rut into the sheets, so Jaskier grabs his hips and hauls him up, preventing him from finding any friction there.

Then he drapes himself across the witcher’s back, holding him tightly to him, and whispers into his ear. “Hands in front, Geralt, I don’t want you touching yourself. I want you to come on my cock—just on my cock. I want you to show me that my cock’s good enough for you, that you don’t need anything or anyone else—I want you to show me how good you are for me, Geralt,” he croons, and Geralt gasps and nods and whines and throws his hands out in front of him, and this is the most powerful Jaskier has ever felt.

He adjusts the angle, again and again, trying to find the spot that will send Geralt over the edge if he concentrates on it long enough, and it takes him several minutes—several minutes of some of the best sex Jaskier thinks he has ever had—before he finds it.

When he does, he knows _instantly_ —Geralt throws his head back and positively _wails_ , a roar ripping from his throat that Jaskier has never heard from him before, and he wastes no time in fucking hard and fast into him, aiming for that spot over and over, driving him to the edge again and again and again.

After that it doesn’t take long.

Geralt goes rigid, clenching with all of his muscles and squeezing Jaskier’s cock so hard he’s almost worried for a moment, and then he’s coming, crying out, hanging his head and _moaning_ , filthy and wrecked, and Jaskier keeps fucking into him, before beginning to slow.

“Don’t— _fucking_ stop—” Geralt bites out, pressing his face into the sheets, his hands still up about his head, and Jaskier readjusts so he’s no longer pinning Geralt to the bed by his prostate and then picks up his pace once more.

He follows Geralt over that precipice minutes later, coming hard inside the witcher and nearly whiting out for a moment as the heat and the pressure and the _love_ that hangs heavy in the air threatens to overwhelm him.

Then he is done and Geralt is unresponsive in the bed, so he takes it upon himself to clean the both of them up.

The sheets are a lost cause and will need to be changed completely—and possibly disposed of—but he flings a towel down over the wet patch and then lays on it himself.

Now it is _his_ turn to watch Geralt dozing, and he makes sure the witcher is covered with a blanket before he settles in.

He wakes, hours later, curled comfortably into Geralt’s arms. The witcher has his face buried in Jaskier’s neck and their legs are thoroughly entwined, arms wrapped around one another, and Jaskier had always thought it was a cliché but now realises what it means when one says he can’t tell where one ends, and the other begins.

He presses a kiss to Geralt’s forehead, smiling at the witcher grumbling in his sleep, and promptly falls asleep again.

~~~

Morning finds the two of them bleary eyed and covered in dried sweat.

Geralt presses his face further into Jaskier’s neck, particularly needy this morning, and Jaskier indulges him, petting a hand down the witcher’s back, with one hand and rubbing calming circles into his shoulder with the other.

“I love you,” Jaskier tells him, so he might hear the words in the light of the morning, after a night of truly spectacular sex—and they feel right, still. They feel right in his mouth, and they feel right in this room, and they feel right with Geralt wrapped around him in tight embrace. They feel _right_.

“I love you,” Geralt mumbles into his neck, the worlds garbled and heavy with sleep, and Jaskier smiles brightly.

“Feel alright, this morning?” he asks the witcher, who snuffles and tries to worm closer into Jaskier’s embrace.

He hadn’t thought it would be possible to do so, but his witcher manages it.

“Mm. Feel good,” Geralt tells him, and Jaskier presses a hand to the back of Geralt’s neck, curling his thumb under his jaw, and clenches his jaw to stop his lower lip from wobbling and blinks furiously to dispel the wetness that threatens to collect. He’s _happy_ , he realises. Utterly, utterly happy—and he has been for a while, now.

“Do you want a bath?” he asks, and the witcher shakes his head, reminding him rather of a petulant child.

“Feel good. Don’t want to move yet,” Geralt mumbles again.

“Then we’ll stay,” Jaskier reassures, and Geralt’s grip relaxes minutely. He slips back into sleep, his face smoothing over, and Jaskier closes his eyes and tries to sleep some more, too.

~~~

The next time he wakes, it is the afternoon, and Geralt has extricated himself from Jaskier somewhat and is watching him intensely.

“Morning,” the witcher tells him.

“I actually think it’s the afternoon, now,” Jaskier informs him, and Geralt scrunches his nose.

“Only technically. Just woke up, so—good morning.” Jaskier laughs, and Geralt gives him the softest look Jaskier might have ever seen on his face, and then he turns and slips out of the bed.

Idleness is not what Geralt was made for, and now he’s no longer so fucked-out, he has to get moving again.

Jaskier does very well with idleness, thank you, so he stretches and burrows further into the warmth of his sheets, listening to Geralt make his way downstairs.

The afternoon is remarkably peaceful, thus far.

Ruined, of course, by Geralt calling, “ _Jaskier! Come see this,”_ and he groans and pulls the sheet up over his head.

Geralt calls him again, and he supposes he really probably _should_ go and see what all the fuss is about, so he slides out of bed and pulls on a thick robe, tying it about himself with clumsy fingers. Geralt hadn’t sounded particularly frantic or worried, so he takes his time.

“Fall back to sleep?” Geralt asks him, amused, as he finally stumbles his way downstairs, and Jaskier pulls a face at him that only makes the witcher rumble with laughter. It’s a lovely noise.

“What’s going on?” he asks, looking about at their front room. Everything is in place.

“Outside. Here,” Geralt replies, leading him to their front door and opening it to reveal—

A small basket on their front step. Woven from grass and—seaweed, he thinks, by the smell.

Inside the basket are three, good-sized fishes—cod, he’s sure, though he is by no means an expert in fish; a collection of bright stones and sea glass, all of them ground smooth by the relentless movement of the tide. There is a piece of bleached white and smooth driftwood, twisted over and around itself, and it is a beautiful curiosity, and elegant. And there is—a horse skull, he thinks it is, fine-boned and delicate, a latticework of cracks making it look as though it were made from porcelain, and it is _stunning_ ; Jaskier gasps when he sees it.

“ _Oh_ ,” he sighs, walking forward to retrieve the gifts, and then he looks at Geralt with wide eyes and a pleased smile.

“The kelpies?” he asks, and Geralt nods.

“A gift,” the witcher confirms, closing the door again.

“They’re _beautiful_ ,” Jaskier compliments, trailing his fingers over the soft bone, the polished sea stones and sea glass of such remarkable hues. He will display these, he knows—he’ll find a place for them.

“And dinner tonight,” Geralt says with a sharp grin, eyeing the cod.

“Mmm,” Jaskier replies absentmindedly, trying to remember what he thinks they have in the pantry; he should be able to season these quite nicely. He can save the spare fish for a stew, perhaps, or—

~~~

Geralt watches him go with fond eyes and a fonder smile, wandering absentmindedly into the kitchen to place down the basket and its contents.

The gift was… payment, he thinks, for killing the conriocht. A contract from the kelpies—a contract from a monster for a monster-killer to kill another monster, and he knows Jaskier said he wouldn’t make this a song but the premise is certainly exciting and curious enough, he thinks.

The day is lovely, the sun a golden disk in a pale blue sky, the ocean a remarkable green-blue marked with lily-white waves. The beach is a flat expanse, unmarred. Birds cry prettily overhead.

That afternoon he finds himself sitting with Roach in the thick bed of her stable, the stall door thrown wide open, and across the aisle Jaskier sits with Pegasus. There are flowers braided through his mane and he has his neck curled around and his head resting in his rider’s lap, his eyes closed in contentment. Geralt has never seen a horse curled around his rider so; if anyone were to earn a creature’s trust so completely, Jaskier is certainly a fitting man for such a part.

Aforementioned man is strumming his lute, and composing.

A light shower of rain, lasting only minutes, settles gently on the roof and fills the air with the smell of petrichor.

Jaskier’s eyes flick up to meet his, his fingers dancing over the strings, and he smiles and winks, and Geralt smiles back—a true smile, one he doesn’t use very often, and he _loves_ this man, and everything is—good. It’s good.

~~~

They have a guest for dinner that night.

Yennefer of Vengerberg invites herself inside without preamble, before Geralt can find a single word to say to her, standing on their doorstep.

“I brought wine,” she tells Jaskier, who does not seem surprised to see her.

“Ooh, lovely—this’ll go nicely with the fish,” he remarks, inspecting the label, and wastes no time in pulling out the third cod and laying a thick cover of the mix of herbs and sauces he’d mixed up for their dinner, before putting it into the oven with the others to bake.

“So,” Yennefer says, looking between them both—Geralt, who is still stunned into silence, and Jaskier, who is busying himself with cleaning up. “Tell me what’s happened.”

~~~

“That’s one thing I regret,” Yennefer laughs a little drunkenly, “the sex. You and I—” she leers at Geralt, “—won’t have sex again. _Ever_.” Jaskier snorts to himself, and the others turn to look at him.

“Please,” he says. “One day I and all of this will be gone—” he flings an arm out, and Geralt doesn’t know if he’s indicating their home or the general atmosphere of the three of them together, or perhaps the beach and the village and this little corner of the world entirely, but Geralt supposes it doesn’t matter because no matter what he means, it’s _true_ , “—and you two will be left. Am I supposed to expect you won’t fall into bed together again?”

Yennefer and Geralt look at each other. “I suppose,” she says slowly, but he just grunts, draining the last of his wine.

“No,” Jaskier orders, and he reaches forward and puts a hand on Yennefer’s knee, looks directly into Geralt’s eyes. “You _will_. And if you don’t I’ll find a way to haunt you both. You’re both shit at relationships—don’t argue,” he tells Yennefer, who looks like she is about to, “but you both need each other, need _someone_ , and you might as well be that person. For each other.” His words slur just a little. The wine has gotten to them despite the meal they’d eaten, it seems.

The fish had been lovely, the wine had been lovely, and the conversation even more so—any awkwardness there might have been is dispelled in the face of Jaskier’s determination to be friends with everybody and Yennefer’s determination to put the past behind her and to have whatever she wants.

Geralt nods, puts an arm around Yennefer without thinking, and she relaxes into him before she can think better of it herself, and Jaskier squints at both of them before nodding, apparently satisfied.

“There you go,” he tells them, and then apparently an idea comes to him quite suddenly because he puts down the wine glass (it falls onto its side, but he emptied it some time ago so there is no damage done) and leaves the room.

“What do you suppose he’s doing?” Yennefer mock-whispers to Geralt—or perhaps she meant to actually whisper, but is too affected by the drink to have managed it.

Geralt only has time to shrug before Jaskier returns, lute in hand. Yennefer cheers and Geralt groans. Jaskier gives both of them a bow.

“And now,” he says with an entirely too-smug grin, “a ballad.” And he begins a beautiful, drunken rendition of _Her Sweet Kiss_.

The music grows and swells and encompasses all three of them, and by the end of it, Jaskier is bowing and Yennefer has put her mouth on Geralt’s, and it is familiar and warm and he kisses back, just for the hell of it, because Jaskier is there and he isn’t shrieking bloody murder and so he assumes it is okay.

And it _is_ okay. Jaskier smiles at them both, setting his lute aside with a flourish. “You’re not allowed to fuck it up,” he tells them both, his tone serious but a playful smile at his lips, and Yennefer squeezes Geralt’s leg.

“We’ll do our best,” she tells the bard.

“I suppose that’s all I can ask for,” he frowns, before brightening. “Anybody up for Gwent?”

~~~

The night passes in good company, and Yennefer takes the spare room that night, declaring she is too inebriated and too tired to contemplate a portal home that night, and Jaskier and Geralt have slow, lazy sex beneath their sheets before falling asleep themselves.

Geralt is awake the next morning to bid Yennefer goodbye, and she kisses him again, just once more. Jaskier comes down hours later, bleary-eyed, and snuggles down next to Geralt on the couch where the witcher has a pair of breeches and sewing supplies in hand.

“I’ve been thinking,” the bard begins, and Geralt elbows him.

“Don’t hurt yourself, he murmurs, and Jaskier scowls at him before taking the breeches and needle and beginning to unpick some of Geralt’s clumsier stitches. They are nigh unnoticeable, but Jaskier has higher standards than he, and Geralt is content to let him just get on with it. It’s one more chore he doesn’t have to do.

“ _I’ve been thinking_ ,” Jaskier shoots him a glare, “that maybe we should get out again. Go traveling. It’s spring—go out, spend the summer killing monsters and singing at courts and taverns and the like, come back in the autumn, stay the winter. I know you’ve always wintered in Kaer Morhen—”

“I wintered there because I didn’t have any other home,” Geralt interrupts him. “This is _home_ , Jaskier.”

The bard nods. “Then it’s a deal? We’ll—go out again?”

Geralt hums. “Could do with heavier coin purses. And my swords are getting rusty.”

“Your swords are _not_ getting rusty,” Jaskier argues, mock-affronted. “You clean them _every day._ ”

“It isn’t every day.”

“It might as well be!”

“’Might as well be’ isn’t every day, though, is it?”

“You’re just arguing because—”

“I’d take you to Kaer Morhen,” Geralt interrupts him. Jaskier very carefully does not react. “I want you—I want you to see where I grew up. Who I grew up with. There aren’t many of us left, and the castle is a ruin—”

“Ooh, old, dilapidated castle—really in keeping with the whole witcher aesthetic, aren’t you?” Jaskier smiles; Geralt ignores him.

“—but we could go there next winter? I’ll introduce you to Vesemir, and to the others. Lambert is a dick, but—”

“I’d love to,” Jaskier stops him before he can tie himself in knots, and Geralt smiles. The bard dips his head and kisses the corner of Geralt’s mouth, then his jaw, then further down, kissing and nibbling at his neck. “Next winter, hm?”

“Mmm,” Geralt rumbles, purring under Jaskier’s lips. “If you’ll have me for that long.”

“Always,” Jaskier murmurs, putting aside the breeches entirely and shifting onto the floor, settling on his knees between Geralt’s legs. He reaches for Geralt’s laces. “I’ll have you for always.”

 _Always sounds rather nice_ , Geralt manages to think before any further thoughts fall right out of his head.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ITS FINALLY DONE! i say that like its taken me absolute years to write. it hasn't; all your comments spurred me on and i had an absolute blast writing straight shit into a word document and then uploading as soon as i was done with it, and you all seem to like it anyway. i may (MAY) be writing more for this series, but it wont be in the next week so im marking it as complete for now. i am however writing more geraskier (i have a siren!jaskier fic in the works that is very angsty with a lovely happy ending) if u guys wanted to keep an eye out!
> 
> thanks for all of u who kept commenting, i love you all. ive never written for such an active fandom before so this was an absolute pleasure. 
> 
> im making some adjustments to the tags on the prequel to this fic to reflect the (delayed) happy ending it now has, so if youve not read it please check it out! its 15k words of geralt denying any feelings for jaskier while they have lots of sex. 
> 
> thats enough from me for now. thanks for all your support and ill see you in my next fic!

**Author's Note:**

> guys pls tell me whether u like it or not i crave that sweet sweet Validation
> 
> Hit me up on tumblr at redkelpie!


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